


Nightmares

by chezchuckles



Series: Army Castle [10]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: F/M, PTSD, this one really is after Foley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:02:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chezchuckles/pseuds/chezchuckles
Summary: After the violation of her home by people looking for her spy, Beckett struggles to feel safe again.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: Army Castle [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945063
Comments: 12
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

\-----

Castle rubbed his hand down his face and pressed his fist against his mouth, staring into space.

“So what do you want to do here?” Eastman said quietly. 

“What do you mean.”

“Don’t be dense.”

Castle bit his knuckles with a growl and shook his head. “I can’t. I need you with me if we’re gonna salvage this. Fuck. You already knew that.”

Eastman nodded. “Wanted to hear you say it.”

Damn it.

Castle tilted his head back against the side of the Jeep as it roared through the Lisbon base. Another jet, another couple hours, back in Marrakesh to fuck with their politics. He had a mission, and he’d left in the middle of a kind of insurrection - but Beckett had needed him. 

“If I go straight to Chez Ali Club,” he started, voice raw as it competed with the engine of the Jeep. “I could do it all from there. And you could-”

“If it could be done from Chez Ali,” Eastman said quietly, “I’d do it myself and you’d go back to New York, not me.”

“Fuck.”

“The souk?” his friend said.

“Ableuh?” he said, thinking about it.

“Or Semmarine.”

“Need two of us.”

Eastman shrugged.

“Yeah.” Needed two of them anyway, why they’d been out here to begin with. Fuck. “Faster though, you’re right. Meet the guy.”

“Back-up.”

“You’ll be there,” Castle sighed. They’d both be there. “Second it’s over, I’m on a fucking plane back to the city. You tell him that.”

There was a stilted moment of silence after Castle’s outburst.

“You know I’m not his messenger,” Eastman said.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. You know that’s not what - how I meant it.”

Eastman said nothing, but after a second, gave him a swift punch in his thigh as the jeep came to a stop. “Let’s go. Get this shit over with, get home.”

Castle nodded, throat closing up.

He had left her asleep.

He had left her freshly-battered inside the apartment where it had all happened.

\-----

He went with Eastman’s choice, the Semmarine Souk, because the Ableuh had pickles and mint and there was something about that combination that made his flesh crawl.

“Pickles.” Eastman said, raising an eyebrow. “And mint. What you got against pickles-”

“Would you shut up?” he muttered, glancing to his partner. Behind the man, the vast walls inside which the souk had set itself up eons ago were a mottled and red-hazed clay, chalky to the touch and already rubbing off against their clothing. 

“Shutting up,” Eastman said amicably. He was leaning against the stall - not abandoned, just rather empty at this hour - a roll of carpets stacked underneath dazzling blue slippers. He’d already told himself no, not again; he’d bought her a silk slip of a dress once and that had nearly been the death of them.

And then he’d fucked her. He didn’t see how he could explain away the slippers.

From the tower overhead, a flash of light.

Castle straightened up, motioned to Eastman who took cover with him under the brightly-colored tarp. They waited a long moment, listening, and just when Castle had thought it was nothing, had been nothing, the man approached.

Dark, swarthy, wrapped in a bright caftan like all the other souk vendors, but his hands stayed hidden in the long folds of material.

“Hands out,” Castle called in French. Most of the operators spoke French, most of those were British out here. Speaking Arabic and looking like Castle did right now - thoroughly pale - meant giving out too much information about himself.

The man regarded him, didn’t remove his hands.

“Hands out,” Castle repeated. “Out where I can see them.” He wouldn’t use Arabic; he wouldn’t. The guy knew French; he was trying to get Castle to reveal himself.

Eastman slinked out from behind the stack of carpets, slipping up behind their contact. The man half-turned and his shoulders hunched, but he withdrew his hands slowly.

A knife.

“Drop it,” Eastman insisted. “Right now. Or we leave and you get nothing.”

“He’s an American bastard,” their contact growled, jutting his chin toward Castle.

“No.” Eastman shrugged. “But it helps to look the part, doesn’t it.”

The man eyed Eastman again, but honestly, Eastman dressed European so thoroughly, so naturally, that there was no tell. 

“American bastards are trying to destroy my country.”

Castle lifted an eyebrow. “Last I heard, it was the coalition of socialists. The Godless hordes.”

The man’s nostrils flared; the look of the zealot about him. Castle had never liked these types, but this was the mission.

Had Eastman not been here to back him up, Castle had no doubt the fanatic would have stabbed him with that ceremonial dagger.

“You ready to do this?” Castle said quickly, drawing the man’s attention again. “Drop the fucking knife.”

Their contact gave a flick of his fingers and the knife dropped.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Eastman muttered.

“You ready to talk or you just gonna stand there?” Castle asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest, regarded first Castle and then Eastman.

Castle would take that as a yes.

“We have enough to outfit fifteen cells.” And once these ragtag terrorists got minimally supplied, their tactics would induce the Moroccan government to sign the fucking initiative and get onboard with UN policies.

People would die, of course. But people always died.

Castle just wanted to get back to Beckett.

\-----

Eastman couldn’t make the flight from Lisbon to Ramstein - there was only one jumpseat and Castle got it. He hadn’t wanted to wait for the next flight, which went to London. But once at Ramstein, he had a short hop into Turkey and then a long-ass cargo plane - US Post Office, fucking hell - before he was on US soil again.

Eastman had contacted him through the network, so that when Castle snagged his US identity bag from the locker in SFO, the phone had a message.

Touched down. Might make it to NYC before you. Next time don’t be so impatient.

Castle cursed himself and called Eastman. The man picked up immediately even as Castle headed down the concourse for the civilian flight to New York. Non-stop. Boarding in... oh, fuck fifteen minutes.

“Castle?”

“You’re already in New York,” Castle growled.

“Yeah, man. Just got here.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Patience, young grasshopper.”

“Can you stop by-”

“I’m already headed that way.”

“Thank you. Just - fuck - sit outside her door if you have to.”

“Want me inside?”

“No.” He hunched his shoulder to keep the phone propped against his ear, hiked his bag up higher, started making a run for it. “Don’t go inside. She’s just had fucking Foley and Deleware in there - I’m afraid for your life.”

Eastman barked a laugh but Castle hadn’t been joking.

“I’ll get eyes on her. Keep a perimeter until you get here.”

“No, Eastman - Mark. No eyes.” Just in case Beckett... well, she deserved not to have her fucking life ruined by him, every little moment dissected and under the microscope.

“All right. I’ll text you when I’m there.”

“Thanks.”

And now he was really gonna have to seriously run to make it.

\-----

He lifted a finger and Eastman came out of the woodwork, or concrete edifice to be more precise. 

Castle nodded and Eastman nodded back, Castle stepping into the vestibule of her apartment building and Eastman leaving it. When the security door closed behind Eastman, Castle stepped up to the interior door and unlocked it, the click of tumblers paired with the grind of wood making his shoulders finally relax.

He took the stairs two at a time and reached her floor, went down the hall. Maybe he should have called, but he’d always discovered anticipation was his enemy. Element of surprise had gained him more, every time. Especially with Beckett.

Don’t give her time to prepare.

But maybe he should have. After this, maybe he was asking for fucking trouble. A bullet between the eyes.

She’ll know it’s me.

Stupid to think that way, and yet he unlocked her apartment door and came inside, quiet, soft, breaching her once-secure home. 

No longer, really. Adrain Foley had been here, Foley had smashed her face into this very same door.

Castle rubbed his fingers along the wood, and his fury rose so potent and vitriolic inside him that he slammed the door shut and flipped the deadbolts in a red haze.

And then put his fist into it, heard the wood groan, his skin split, but his knuckles only stung.

“Fuck,” he growled, and then he turned around and headed down the hallway to her bedroom.

She wasn’t even awake. 

Castle stopped short at the threshold, his breath rattling fiercely in his chest, blood singing, fist bleeding, but she was curled on her side, small and compact, her face in darkness. He took a step but couldn’t move, the whole room blank and dark, so dark.

She’d turned off all the lights. Hadn’t even left the damn light on in the kitchen, that one over the stove - not even that. She’d done it on purpose. Pitch black.

Always had to prove something.

Castle pulled out his phone and checked the time; he didn’t even know. The face lit up and he sighed.

A little after three.

Thirty-three hours since he’d left her, and he wasn’t sure she had even made it out of bed. She looked to be in the same exact spot where he’d left her, and she’d called in sick for Friday anyway.

Fuck.

Castle shucked the bag, toed off his shoes, unbuckled his belt. He dropped the jeans that still had smears of red clay on them, stepped out of the pile of clothes towards her bed even as he yanked the shirt off over his head.

He crawled into bed with her, lying face to face, his knees drawn up like her own. She was asleep. Her face wasn’t so much in shadows as terribly bruised, and Castle sighed at the mottled purple across her cheekbones. He spread his fingers out on the mattress and touched the angle of her elbow, stroking softly.

Had she even gone to the minor med down the street? He doubted it.

\-----

She screamed.

He hadn’t been sleeping. But she screamed and he jerked so hard in shocked response that he nearly fell off the bed. 

She sat up straight and scrambled out of bed, fell to her knees, and he jumped to the floor from the mattress, caught her around the shoulders. She gasped and got a knee into his ribs before he caught her thigh and gripped the back of her neck, tugged her into his body too close to do much harm.

“Rick,” she croaked. Question and answer.

“I startled you,” he whispered. An excuse he expected her to echo.

She was stiff for a moment and then she wrapped herself around him on a moan. “Rick.” 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he murmured, wrapping his arms tighter around her. “It’s okay. It’s me. No one else. You and me.”

She shivered hard and her fingers were hard fists against his bare chest, her face pressed to the slope of his neck.

She was crying.

He would never mention it. “I took too long,” he muttered. “I took too long. But I’m here. Here now.”

Her arm hooked around his neck, gripping tight, and Castle took the hint. He bent down and got his arms under her ass, hauled her up against him until she could wrap her legs around his waist. He walked her back to the bed, kicking the covers away so he wouldn’t trip, and he sank back down to the mattress with her.

She stayed plastered to his chest, her face hidden against him, and he laid down on his back, head on her pillow. He had to use his toes to drag the sheet up, a vague sense of deja vu coming to him. How many times had he done this before? Dragged the sheet up over them in bed? But usually it was after fucking themselves into oblivion.

Not this time.

Her face was hot at his skin. Swollen. She was still leaking tears, though now it wasn’t crying so much as plain exhaustion. Castle cupped the back of her head, stroking through her hair, his other hand rubbing her back, slowly.

Slowly. Easing her down.

A nightmare, he thought now. She must have had a bad dream. 

Before he’d left, she’d been too exhausted for nightmares. At least this meant she was healing, right?

Didn’t feel like healing. Didn’t feel good at all. His bones were still rattling with that scream.

She wasn’t asleep, even now. She was just lying on top of him, breathing shakily, one arm at his neck, a fist at his ribs. He could feel her lashes against his skin as she blinked.

“Kate,” he whispered.

She didn’t answer, but he knew she was entirely too wide awake.

“In Marrakesh,” he murmured, slowly massaging the base of her skull. “Mark and I were in a souk. You know what those are? Markets, these huge open air markets against the walls. They sell everything you can think of. Anything you want, sweetheart. The one we went to, Mark and I, was textiles. Cloth. Beautiful cloth, baby. Blue like the sky with stars, twilight maybe. Glittering.”

He felt her swallowing hard and then her fist released at his ribs, loosening.

“I wanted to buy you slippers. Silk slippers. They were green like your eyes.”

She sucked in a slow, long breath. He waited, but she wasn’t protesting, wasn’t saying a word.

So he filled up the bleak darkness with everything he could, everything he knew to say, everything he shouldn’t because she just might need it.

“Slippers to match the silk dress. Remember how it felt against our skin? I want to wrap you in silk, the softest silk, drag it against your belly, feel it swish at your thighs. Silk like your mouth. Your lips. How it matches your eyes, love; it was exactly the right color for when your pupils pinpoint and leave all that lovely iris free to swirl...”

He kept talking and she listened and neither of them slept.

\-----


	2. Chapter 2

“How many?” she croaked. Not the first question of the night - early morning - and yet her voice was still as raw as if she’d screamed the night away.

She might have.

“Ended up being twelve,” he confessed. 

The noise in her chest prompted him to continue. She was still lying over his chest, but at least now she was looser, warmer, didn’t quite feel like she’d been crying into his skin an hour ago.

“Twelve isn’t near enough,” he said.

“No, more than enough,” she rasped. “Too much.”

“Well, I didn’t get any of them for you, but I wanted to.”

“What would I do with twelve?” she said, her voice cracking at the number.

He played with the ends of her hair, flipping it around his fingers. Her hair curled up when he did that. He liked it. The humidity between their bodies was making her whole mane draw up in curls; she was beautiful. Any way she was, she was beautiful.

“What would I do with twelve exotic plants, Richard?”

He smiled. “You have the ledge behind the sink.”

“An olive tree wouldn’t fit.”

She was getting feisty again; that was good. “It was a miniature. Two miniatures. And a little lemon tree. There was only one peacock though.”

“Why would I need a peacock?”

“It was supposed to be a peacock pavilion.”

“But I already have a peacock,” she muttered.

His fingers went still at the nape of her neck. “You do?”

“Yes. You.”

He laughed, the first laugh that he’d felt come naturally since he’d... ages. Ages. She was smiling against his chest, he thought. Smiling and stroking her fingers at his ribs.

“You have plants here,” he murmured. “It would just be another few plants.”

“I have desert plants. That require no watering. Otherwise they’d be dead.”

“What do you think Morocco is?” he chuckled. “Desert, Beckett. They’re all desert plants. Drought-lovers, like someone else I know. Thriving with so little care.”

“I think you’re talking about me, Richard Castle, and it doesn’t sound so complimentary.”

“Sure it is. Quite complimentary. You’re indomitable. And how much do I need to water you?” He sighed softly and stroked the hair at her back. “Not as much as I want to. I’d water you every day. Full sun. Just-”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. He shut up, but he kissed her fingertips and finally rolled to put her on the mattress. Side by side. Their eyes meeting in the very dark darkness.

He loved her; he loved everything about her. She was looking at him with all that struggle in her eyes, how she wanted to overcome it. She already had; she had.

“You’re okay,” he murmured, lifting his hands to frame her face. She gripped him by the wrists as if to hang on. He kissed her forehead. “You’re okay. We’re okay. We’re safe.” He stroked his thumbs lightly at her cheeks, a reminder every time he touched those bruises that she had survived. She always survived.

“We’re safe,” she echoed finally. “We’re okay.”

And then her eyes closed, her fingers still curled around his wrists, hanging on.

\-----

Beckett was asleep, but she was shivering, goose bumps flaring at the backs of her thighs, up her spine, to her arms. 

For the first time in days, he felt like he had this covered; he already knew how to be good for her.

Castle slipped out of bed and moved for the duffle bag he’d brought with him. He unzipped the main compartment, pulled out the ID kit he’d shoved inside when he’d gotten to SFO (so far San Francisco had been his best port in and out of the country, getting to her). He found the thing he actually had bought inside the souk, pulled out the handira blanket.

It was made of wool, cotton, and linen, an amalgamation of material woven into a thick, tufted latticework. Attached to the knitted crosspieces were mirrored sequins, not as crazily foreign and exotic as he’d feared, but just as Bohemian and unique as Beckett herself.

This one was deep twilight in color, the material he’d been describing when he’d first started telling her about the souk. Castle stretched it over the bed and her narrow body as well, straightening the ends as they hung to the floor.

Castle stood watching her a moment, asleep under his twilight-silver wedding blanket, and then he crawled into bed with her, slipped under the covers.

It was soft, warm, and her breath was even and easy. Castle touched her cheek.

He would never tell her it was a marriage blanket, no. But when he’d seen it in the souk, he had imagined making love to her on top of it. Beautiful hair tumbling out over the silvering material, the deep turquoise blue of the wool and linen woven together.

This was them too, the way they were all these jumbled pieces coming together. 

He slid his arm around her shoulders and matched his body to hers, not tired, never tired, just willing and wanting to hold her until she woke again and needed him.

\-----

“Knife!” she yelled, her thrashing cutting off the word.

Castle wrapped his arm around her but she jerked violently, half-awake, still gripped in a nightmare, scrambling to get away from him.

“Kate. Kate!”

He tried to grab her, tried to get closer, some misguided sense that his presence would comfort her, but Kate arched away, a choked noise that cut to his heart.

“Kate, come on, love. Come on. Just a dream.”

None of his words seemed to penetrate. He tried to lay himself over her, pressing down into her body, but she writhed so hard that her desperation made him feel like a fucking bastard. Desperate to get away from him.

Whimpering.

So he got out of bed, left her alone.

She calmed down, panting, eyes squeezed tightly shut, a fistful of the blanket in her hand. She threw her arm over her eyes and sucked down air, gulping at it, and then dragged the blanket up to her neck, turning over.

Like she had no idea he was even there.

He stood there beside the bed, watched her cocoon herself in the handira, her body growing compact and small and lonesome. 

But covered. Not cold.

Was that the extent of his help to her? I can keep ya warm, darlin’. Can’t come when you call, can’t be here before you even need me, can’t have your back when dealing with a terrorist who wants to fuck you over real good, but I’m a warm body. Better than nothing.

Was it?

\-----

A knife.

A knife, a knife, the knife-

God-

She cried out as the blade flashed between her ribs. But instead of cold metal slicing through her guts, it was a warm hand fishing around, fingers clawing up towards her heart.

Beckett choked on it, the taste of dirty nails and unwashed skin, the whisper of a voice in her ear mah kishle muh kishla mo kwishla

mo chuisle

She screamed.

Woke herself up screaming. Screaming. Body wrapped in bedcovers, too tight, too hot, sweating so much she felt liquid with it.

Kate gasped, hard breaths, fast breaths, light-headed with fear.

Craven. Abject. Humiliating.

Fear.

Beckett collapsed back to bed, the weight of blankets over her body somehow unfamiliar.

She sucked in a juddering breath and turned her head to push her feet out of bed-

But Castle was there.

Kate blinked.

He was on his knees beside her bed, held away from the mattress by some invisible line she couldn’t quite see, but he looked to be in agony.

“What’re you doing on the floor?” she rasped.

His arm came up and, to her horror, she flinched. Didn’t stop him; he touched the side of her face and then she really was flinching. Fuck, that hurt.

“A chuisle mo chroí,” he murmured.

Kate cried out, jerking back in bed only to be tangled up in blankets. He dropped his hand and made a fist against the mattress, bowed his head.

“He said that to you. Foley.”

“What,” she croaked, her pulse still jackrabbiting in her throat.

“You just - said it. You said it in your sleep.”

“Not - I don’t know,” she said. But she felt panicky, her insides fluttering and her guts slick in her belly. She wanted to cry. Inexplicably, suddenly, she was going to cry. “Rick.”

He didn’t reach out for her, and her whole body swayed, needing, breaking apart at the seams.

“Please,” she choked.

“Did he say that? Did he - take that too?”

“I don’t know what you’re-” She swallowed down the vicious need to cry. “He said - what does it matter?”

“Because that’s - he took that - those are my words.”

“I don’t know what you even mean,” she begged. Her body was shaking, fists in her thighs, blankets draped heavily over her like a funeral shroud. “I don’t - he said - he said. He said that you shouldn’t have left me defenseless. Shouldn’t have left the things you love, but then I threw him off - and he said - he said you’d taught me something. You taught me something.”

Her voice collapsed and she pressed her hand to her mouth, lips twisting trying to hold it back.

She couldn’t hold it back.

Kate jerked out from under the blankets and slid off the mattress into him, clutching around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. She cried out when it hurt but Castle wrapped his arms around her and cradled the back of her head.

“Kate, honey. I’m sorry, so sorry. I only made it worse.”

She had no idea why he kept talking; talking made everything worse. “Shut up,” she croaked. “Shut up. Don’t say anything.”

Castle dragged the blanket off the bed and wrapped her in it, even as she curled up against him, lost in the tangle of his limbs. She let out a shuddering breath and eased her face away from his skin, the hard points where her bones met his and made her hurt. She found a spot over his chest that didn’t seem so bad, and she slid her arms around his waist.

“Muckushla,” she whispered. “That’s what he said.”

“A chuisle.”

She shivered. “No, it was different. Muck-something-”

“Mo chuisle?” He spoke into the top of her head, lips brushing over her hair. “Not a chuisle. Gaelic for my pulse, lifeblood. But not his.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Speaking about the person, not to the person,” he sighed. “You were mine. Not his. That’s why.”

She didn’t understand. She never understood with him. “I don’t like Gaelic,” she muttered.

“No Gaelic, grá mo chroí.”

She choked on a laugh, pinching his skin with her fingers. He only gave a stuttering laugh in reply, lifted to his feet with her in his arms. She grunted, kicking out at him, but he dropped them back to the mattress, his spine to the headboard.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Foreign languages you don’t know might be my safest bet,” he said. She could feel his smile in the top of her head. “Nola sentitzen da zure aurpegia?”

“I hate you.”

“Mm, ditto.” He touched her cheek with two fingers like he was tracing the exact faultlines in her bones. “When the night is over, we’re doing something about this.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

He chuckled softly and cupped her jaw, lowered a kiss to her lips that felt exquisite.

“Sleep if you can.”

“Tell me another story.”

\-----

With her head against his collarbone, and his chest vibrating words right into her spine, she could almost - almost - fall back asleep again.

Castle had positioned himself to keep her entirely comfortable, and while she knew that he was doing it on purpose, discomfiting himself for her, she didn’t care. Let him. Her skull was riddled with aching sharp needles and it felt good like this. It finally felt good.

“And so - well, I know you think this is crazy - but I jumped.”

She did think it was crazy. But just like him. The best part of this was that she didn’t even need to answer him back; he just kept going. Like he wanted it out there.

“The water was shockingly cold, but the fall was so nice. Beautiful, kind of an out of body experience.”

“Mm,” she murmured, sliding her palms over his thighs. His arms were loose around her waist but his fingers tripped at her sides. She hummed, half-drowsy, but she forgot and turned her head into him, her cheek hitting his chest. It hurt.

Castle must have felt it, because he crossed his arms over her, was silent a moment until the fierce pain fell back to a dull ache.

When he spoke again, it was quiet, and his hands were warm over her stomach.

“The waterfall is pretty vicious, all that water churning and tumbling. I was pushed down deep, held under by the pounding.”

He was here, alive, the waterfall had been - how long ago had he said? Nearly five years. But she still found herself caught up in his story, the way he told it, holding her breath as she imagine him pummeled by water, running from guerrilla fighters in the Congo.

“I was held down for a long time. Every time I kicked for the surface, I got stuck by something - water, tree roots, eels-”

“Eels-” she choked.

“Well, sea snakes. I got one wrapped around my chest. And fuck, there were leeches too. I’d forgotten about those.”

“Every time you start a story, it’s so bland. Like, oh once I jumped off a waterfall. And it sounds like some stunt a college frat boy would’ve pulled. But in actuality, it’s always seriously horrific. Leeches and sea snakes and drowning.”

“I don’t know. See, the sea snake is supposedly salt water. But the Congo River wasn’t-”

“Hush, Castle,” she said, smiling into the darkness. “Death-defying is what you are.”

Castle shrugged behind her, his hand moving up her stomach with the movement. “Guess so. Anyway, I wrestled with this eel-like thing for a while, had to be about nine feet, thick bodied, and I’d break the surface only to get dragged back down. When the force of the water kicked me free, pushing me down the river, then I could focus on the man-eating snake.”

“Oh, then.”

“Don’t be snarky.”

She laughed a little, dropped her hands on top of his forearms, trailing her fingers up and down the soft hair. His mouth came down to the top of her head, a kiss she couldn’t feel but sense. 

“I used my knife to hack at the snake-eel thing, kept throwing little pieces off into the river as I tried to get to the bank. When I finally got clear of the river, I still had all these hunks of snake clinging to me.”

She smiled, tapped her fingers at the back of his hand. “Hunks of snake, sexy.”

Castle framed her hips with his hands and stroked his fingers over the protrusion of bone. “Dumb story. One of a million.”

“Then we only have nine hundred ninety-nine thousand-”

Castle laughed as his cheek came down and abraded hers. He kissed her roughly, cutting off her words. She grunted into the taste of him, darkness and words, the press of his mouth pushing against the bones of her face.

She lifted her hand to him and clutched the fine hairs at his nape, surged up into his kiss, her tongue seeking more than he wanted to give. His grumble of displeasure was swallowed by her need, and she turned to slide her thigh over his hips, tried to press herself against him.

He broke his mouth from hers, a fist in her hair and his eyes glittering in the dark. “No, baby-”

“Don’t say no to me,” she growled, grinding her hips against him. But her words came out a little more broken, a little more desperate than she would have liked.

Castle wrapped her hair in his fist, pulled her back, gripping her hard. “I’m not saying no to you, Beckett. I was doing something here, and you’re ruining it. Now turn back around, I want to touch you.”

Kate caught her breath, somehow surprised that he wanted her too, needed her as much as she wanted to be had.

But she turned around again, her back pressed to the firm, rippling wall of his chest, and let his arms encircle her. His mouth dropped to the top of her shoulder and his cheek scraped her jaw. His fingers were stroking at the waistband of her underwear.

Oh.

“See what I’m doing here?”

Oh, yes.

Kate slid her hands along his forearms, feeling the taut line of his tendons as his fingers worked into her abs. His touch massaged, explored further, claiming territory as he moved south. She bucked her hips up into the heat of his palms, and Castle finally pushed below her panties.

His fingers moved between her legs and she mewled, rising up into the work of his hands.

“In Marrakech, all I could think about was you. Pressing here, into your sex, the wet heat of you against my fingers.”

“Fuck,” she whispered. Her whole body pulsed with it, the flare of arousal in her blood. 

His fingers worked her hard, insistent, shoving her up the spiral of her pleasure, tighter, deeper, tighter. Everything was so intense, so perfect, vibrating with need.

“Come for me, Kate, sweetheart. You did so good. You deserve to rest, deep and dreamless. Come for me.”

She came apart wordlessly, without warning, a peak that burned clear and bright in her night sky.

She was dazzling explosions of light and then she was fizzling out into blank nothing, dragged so far down that she was asleep before she knew where all this had been headed.

\-----


	3. Chapter 3

The morning light was a milky white in her room. It made the bed their bed seem set apart, drifting. Separate.

Be honest, he thought. Be honest. Our bed. 

It’s mine as well.

He thought of this place as theirs together, their space, where they came, they met, they connected and shared and lived. Not the kitchen, not the living room, but this bed. The bedroom was hers, the dresser was hers with a portion given over for his t-shirts and boxer briefs, the chair was distinctly hers, the art and figurines were intricately hers, but the bed was claimed by a new pronoun, a we-ness that breeched whatever boundaries and limitations either of them brought into this.

They brought a lot of shit into this.

But it dissolved before the united front of their bed.

And how beautiful she was in it. How beautiful. Milky white morning light smoothed out the planes of her face and smudged the bruises into mere shadows. Her shoulder was a crescent moon in the deep field of sky that was the wedding blanket.

He should never have bought it; he should’ve known better.

Oh, God, she was going to-

He didn’t know. That was the problem. There was no predicting Beckett when she was exhausted and wounded, a cornered thing, but at the same time, so much of Kate shined through. Like the cracks gave him glimpses of glory, these moments of surprising, heart-stopping bewilderment, where she did the opposite of what he expected and flayed her own heart for him to find.

She might love it. She might run her fingers over the intricate work and give him that smile from the shy side of her lips, corners and eyes, and then run her fingers over him next, in that very same way, slide her knee over his thigh and push him inside - all without words.

She might.

It was a very very faint possibility but it had happened before. Once. Just a few - oh, but he had been the one injured, nearly dying, and her whole demeanor had changed. 

He was stupid to cling to death-uninhibited promises. Foolish to expect tenderness when Beckett thought it weak from herself. Even from him, it took a lot for her to go along with his moments of sentimental gush.

She was asleep though, and the moment was postponed, and the light was filling her room by beckoning degrees, slowly, trickling through the spaces and suffusing the rippling corners. 

She was asleep, and she’d needed it, because she’d dropped so fast, sinking like a stone once he’d released her. Like reverse Sleeping Beauty; he’d been the prince to break the terrible curse, allowing her to finally fall unconscious.

He was no prince. 

But he couldn’t stay away; he wouldn’t. He was hers, whether she wanted him or not. It wasn’t worship, wasn’t fatal, wasn’t some kind of disease or possession. It wasn’t her, it was them. It was just everything good, everything light - and he was a man made from darkness, from void.

They filled him and made him still; they were sleep and dreams. It was closing his eyes to find peace and the surety of waking again in the morning; they were bursting with rich textures of emotion that swirled and raged and consumed, touching, touching, always grasping at him, moving, rearranging, upsetting, reinventing, remaking.

They. 

Their bed.

His - everything - here in the cove of his arms, everything that was life. And so yes, he’d wedded her, married her, been made one with her - they. Not we two, but the singularity of them, their close orbits pulling them down into each other, the black hole of love.

Whatever else happened, however many enemies they faced - from within and without - they were inevitable. A done deal.

So let the handira blanket cover them, let her know or discover its meaning. He didn’t care; he wasn’t going to hide from her any longer.

He was love in with her; he was going to show it in every aspect of his being. It was unavoidable. 

Best to stop trying to avoid it.

It was impossible to be closer; he was wrapped at her back with his chin tucked into her shoulder. But he slid his knee between her thighs and settled her deeper, became her pillow and her covering both. Her hair brushed his mouth as he turned his head; he touched his lips to the place below her ear where she seemed to feel everything.

“I love you, Kate. I love you. This is it for me, even if you won’t have me. This is it. There will be no other.”

\-----

Kate woke suddenly and all at once to the sharp tang of beef stew.

She gasped in a breath and tasted it on her tongue, at the back of her throat, and she sat upright.

“Whoa, hey there, careful.”

When she turned her head, Castle was lifting a tray in the air, in bed with her, consternation and amusement flickering on his face.

“What?” she croaked. She felt wiped, entirely drained, and it was so hard to come back.

“Dinner. It’s late, and I thought you should wake up. For a while anyway.”

Kate swallowed past the dryness in her throat and pushed up slowly to the headboard, her body somehow canting to lay against his, draped at his side like a pathetic thing. She couldn’t manage to move though, her eyes slipping shut.

“Kate, it’s eight o’clock. At night. I got here around three this morning, but still I think that’s too much time unconscious. Will you - at least open your eyes for me?”

She jerked upright, staring at him. “Eight at night. No. I - I have to be at work. Right now. I have to be-”

“I pulled the duty rosters and got you switched with some new guy. Detective Esposito. You’re fine. He took your weekend nights.”

“Oh, fuck,” she moaned, sinking back against the headboard. “Fuck, I - how’d I let this happen?”

“I took care of it; it’s not a problem. The precinct was told about the accident at the gym - the insurance already filed it. And the Captain of your house called - Montgomery - he called for you. I let it go to voicemail.”

“Oh, shit,” she muttered, opening her eyes again. “Thank you. Really. No. Thank you. My brain’s been - rattled.”

He blinked once and then nodded. “Of course. Kate. Of course. You took down a fucking terrorist. I think rearranging your work schedule is the very least.”

She shrugged and gestured to the wooden tray over his lap. “What’s this?”

“Dinner. I - made it.”

“You made it?” she yelped, wincing when the sound reverberated in her cheeks. She lowered her voice, ducked her head down to his shoulder, resting there instead. “You made it. Beef stew?”

“Beef stroganoff? I think. Something like it. Without the mushrooms. I had to - uh - you might hate it. I had to make do with what you had in your kitchen.”

“You stocked it before you left,” she reminded him, reaching for one of the bowls. “So it’s your own damn fault if you didn’t have what you wanted.”

“True, Beckett. My own damn fault you don’t ever eat out of your own fucking kitchen.”

She laughed, keeping it quiet, chuckling into the bowl as she cupped it near her face. “Wow, baby, this smells amazing.”

“I’ve come a long way from my omelette-making days, but I still don’t know.”

“Shut up about it and let me try it.” Kate narrowed her eyes at him but that hurt too, and fucking hell, she was going to have to be timid and soft and quiet for weeks, wasn’t she? This was going to be awful.

Oh, damn, this stew was so good.

“Wow,” she croaked, swallowing fast as it burned the roof of her mouth. “Good. Rick. This is really good. Eat it.”

He was watching her so damn carefully, but she saw it in his eyes - he couldn’t seem to hide from her any more. Anxiously awaiting her approval, swirling like agony, and then relaxing out into a near-giddy relief when she said she’d liked it.

“It’s really good,” she promised, laying her hand on his arm. “It tastes like something you’d buy - well, no. Not like from a can. But out in a nice restaurant. Professional. How’d you get so good?”

“I just - made it up,” he husked. There was such damn deep relief on his face that it hurt to look, to see it. She glanced down at her bowl instead, inhaled the rich aroma, the steam touching her cheeks like ghost fingers.

She took another slow spoonful and melted back into the headboard, closing her eyes. “This is good. I didn’t know how starving I was.”

“You probably haven’t eaten since I left,” he muttered, knocking his fist into her knee and jostling her awake again. She hadn’t been asleep, just - resting there. “Have you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she admitted. “I’ve - I guess I just hibernated. Always my go-to coping skill when it’s - that - that-”

“Too much,” he whispered. His eyes were dark and his hand came up and caressed her cheek, so light. It hurt too. Her face really hurt, and he was going to make her cry without her consent.

“Too much,” she echoed, but it felt like a confession.

“Then eat, love.” His hand came down to her knee and his arm draped over her legs like he was going to stay.

“Better have been a comma in that command,” she muttered, but she brought the stew up to her mouth again.

But Castle laughed before she could take another bite; his mirth was so sudden that it rocked the whole bed.

“Oh, that’s good,” he chuckled. “Eat love. Yes, well, that works, Beckett. Made with love. Now eat.”

She tried to roll her eyes, but that failed her too. All her old stand-bys hurt.

She ate her love. Whatever. Just an expression people used.

\-----

Castle washed the bowls by hand, not sure if the two spoons and three plastic cups in her dishwasher were dirty or clean. Hard to tell. He’d just finished when Kate came up at his back, her body pressed against his spine.

He lifted a wet hand to hers over his sternum, stunned by the feel of her so suddenly.

She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either, and the night had fallen so long ago that the darkness was comfortable. 

He dropped his hand back to the bowl he needed to rinse, began running cool water over it. The ceramic was slippery under his fingers, but he settled it on the drying rack on top of the counter and that was it. Done.

She slid to his side and then released him, her body a slight thing even as it took up every ounce of his attention and focus in the entire room. He’d only just begun to think, to really think, and he found he needed to stop.

He had to stop thinking about it, what might have happened, how close it’d been. He found his hands were shaking again and it was pathetic, but it’d been so close. It’d been so close.

Kate came up to him again and he saw she had the stew pot in her hands, was settling it on the counter. “I think I have a tupperware container somewhere,” she murmured. Her hip brushed his as she lifted up to reach the top shelf of the cabinet. Her eyes were bruised, cheeks mottled. “This was good; we’re saving it.”

Saving it.

“You saved my life.”

Kate startled and jerked around to stare at him, tupperware raining down over the counter around them.

He stared back, slowly closed his mouth.

He’d said that out loud.

“Richard?”

His spine straightened. “I only meant. If something had happened to you, from him. If he’d gotten to you.” His throat was dry; this was going wrong.

“Castle, I-”

“Don’t. That was - of course it’d have been - you’d have died. Fuck. I’m sorry. Just - I never thought it would come back to you, Kate, and it did, he did, the worst - the worst-”

“I think you’re more worked up over this than I am,” she muttered. But she was pressing her body against his and twining her arms around his torso, her palms flattening at his back. 

His hands were wet. He made fists and wrapped himself around her, his face pressing against her hair and cheek, a deep breath to sustain him.

“Rick? Are you really-”

“No, I’m okay,” he growled. He wasn’t okay. This had been personal, and Foley had been the last person - the only person - to make it personal before.

She turned her nose into his cheek. “I want to show you - something. Okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed, but it took a second to release her. 

“Stay right here,” she murmured. “Only a moment.”

She slipped away again, a fish in and out of the dark waters of her apartment, leaving him entirely. Castle turned back to the pot and took a container from the cascade of them across the counter, began dishing out the leftovers into the tupperware. Blindly. Not seeing. 

She laid a knife on the counter, a knife he knew, and he dropped the pot into the sink.

“Fuck,” he gasped.

“He had this. I - saved it.”

It was a custom knife: pearl handled with a rubber grip-tract, texturized, five inch-blade that came to a point. He’d seen this knife before, and how could he ever forget it? It had been in Foley’s hand the one time Castle had seen his face, and it had been so close to Castle’s own face that he’d thought himself made.

Maybe he had been made. Maybe that had been the turning point and he hadn’t even known it. He’d gambled wrongly, thinking that he had time, he’d made a mistake and that knife, he knew it had been that knife. It was the knife that had been used on his man on the inside, the knife used to butcher his contact, and now Kate had placed it before him on the kitchen counter.

He stared at it. “Oh, God.”

“He wanted - he said he wanted...” She wrapped her hand around the handle, gripping it. “Fuck him. He’s dead.”

“What did he say.”

“He’d fuck me with it. Well, now he’s ashes. And I have his knife. Fucking bastard.”

“He’s dead,” Castle said, a weight crushing through his chest and dropping out down to his knees. He was going to collapse; he couldn’t withstand this. “He made it - made sure I’d know that you-”

Kate reached past him, jostling him from the vision that had risen before him. She took the pot out of the sink and yanked open the dishwasher, crammed it onto the bottom rack, and slammed the door shut again. 

She still had the knife in her hand.

He watched her silently until she jabbed the blade into an empty slot in the knife block on top of the counter, like it was nothing more than a steak knife. Like it was nothing at all, no matter to her.

Fuck her with it. God, he’d never before felt like this.

“Stop it, Richard,” she said, eyes glittering. “Stop. He’s dead. We are not.”

He nodded, swallowing hard. “I know that. I do. Never hit me like this before. Never been out of my control before; I’ve never had it beyond my-”

Her fingers touched his mouth and he went still, quiet. She stroked a finger at his bottom lip, leaned in fast and kissed him. “No more. Nothing to be done now, nothing you could have done then. Sometimes it’s out of our hands, Rick.”

“But you... I’d have been in fucking Marrakech with no idea or warning and you’d-”

She squeezed the back of his neck, her eyes fierce on his. “Life isn’t fair, Richard. It fucks us over. My mom - my mother was - fuck. Whatever we have now, just take it. Take it. Because this is all we get.”

God, she terrified him. In the best ways.

Castle attacked her mouth with his own, pushing forward to slam her back against the counter. Her growl was a moan around his tongue, and she bucked her hips into his, his cock rising in response. 

Her hands dragged at his shirt, tugging it up just enough to her fingers at his skin. He grunted at the touch of her, electric shocks to his groin, and he worked at getting her pants off. She writhed against him, helping and hindering both, and he managed to get his fingers hooked in the waist of her leggings and yanked half down her thighs.

“Fuck me,” she gasped. “Fuck me right now.”

He yanked at her panties, pulled aside the dark cotton and pushed his fingers between her legs. She mewled and bit his tongue for it, and he slipped through the wet heat of her sex, groaning at the feel of her.

She bucked against his hand, pushing back onto the counter, her legs coming up to circle his waist. “Why are your pants on?” she moaned. 

Her hands were working at his zipper now, but he was entranced at the tight feeling of her cunt around his fingers, so fucking amazing, the knot of her clit and the folds of her sex and deeper, deeper, his penetration finding her so close.

“You’re so wet,” he murmured, dropping a kiss to her neck, the top of her collarbone where it peeked out from her shirt. “You’re so beautiful, Kate, and fierce. So fierce I want to fuck you hard.”

“Take me,” she growled. “Off, take these off.”

He had to release her cunt to shove off his own pants, get them down, kick off his shoes to do it, his boxers down with the pants. His eyes were on her. “Shirt, Kate. Get it off - all of it. I want to see you.”

She was already stripping the leggings down over her calf, and now she was lifting her hips to peel down her panties. He stared a moment, caught up, and then remembered his own shirt, drew it off.

“You gotta do this faster, fucking hell. Faster, Richard.”

He reached out and grabbed the hem of her shirt, pulled it over her head so that her hair was wild and fell around her shoulders in a riot, messy and gorgeous. Her cheeks were flushed under that mottled purple, her eyes wide, too dark and beautiful for him.

“Touch yourself a moment,” he husked. “Touch your breasts, your cunt. I want to see you.”

She blinked and obeyed, arched her hips up to her own hand, moaned when she touched herself. Her fingers went slick and the wetness was a sound in the dark apartment, the quiet of the night meeting her breathless work against her folds.

“That’s so fucking hot,” he moaned, dropping his fists to the counter, bowed over her body. He touched his mouth to her breast, swallowed around her nipple. She keened, gripped the back of his head even as she worked two fingers around her clit. He sucked on her skin, laved her nipple, falling hard into the sounds she made as she fingered herself.

“Come in,” she husked. “Come in close.”

He stepped into the vee of her legs and she hooked her ankles at the small of his back. Her fingers still worked, bumping the back of her hand against his throbbing cock, and he moaned around her breast, lashes touching her skin as he pressed down into her chest.

This was all they had, all she could promise him, and he would take it. Take her.

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “Yes. I want you.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted up, pulling her body flush with his. She came to him with a gasp, her eyes flying to his, intense and consuming, and her legs gripped him, working her body into her hand between them.

He reached down and pulled out her fingers; she groaned and her head tilted back, eyes falling shut. He pressed her fingers into his mouth and licked the cream of her arousal, nipped at the digits as she rubbed herself against him.

He released her fingers, pressed her hand to the side of his neck where she gripped him, still thrusting her hips against his erection, sliding him between her folds, hitting her clit, her body shaking with effort.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he growled. 

Kate moaned, eyes flaring open. She looked down at them, the place where they rubbed together, friction and heat and so damn wet. Her free hand pressed to his abs and traced the line of his muscle as he flexed to meet her, thrusting. Her lashes were dark on her cheeks, so beautiful, her body, her breasts, the dark copper of her nipples and the fall of her hair. 

“Kate.”

She lifted her eyes to his, her gaze like a touch.

He leaned in and kissed her, mouth open to taste, to take, to tongue. She moaned and kissed him back, deep, intent, words being said without sounds. Her body rocked against his and her knees squeezed at his hips, angling her sex at the head of his cock.

He reached between them and thumbed her clit, made her shudder with it, before he found himself and aligned his erection to the pulsing heat of her sex. 

“Now, Rick,” she husked in his ear. “Now take me.”

Castle pushed inside her body. She was tight and wet and resistant, her walls squeezing and gripping, and then he was deep. He was deep and she was trembling around him, surrounding him, with him.

“So good,” she whispered. 

He moaned her name, gritting his teeth to stay seated in her. Her breasts were warm at his chest; he found a handful and kneaded the flesh, slowly, massaging as his cock pulsed in time to his heart between her legs.

“So good. No one can take me like-”

“No one takes you from me,” he growled, nipping at her lips, her chin, moving down to skim his lips along the top of her breast. “No one can take you. No one.”

She moaned her acceptance - it better fucking be acceptance - as his mouth sucked on her breast and his hips began to move. He pushed deeper and withdrew, thrust harder as she worked back to meet him. Give and take, perfect rhythm, deeper and deeper.

She was grinding herself against him, she was gripping his neck to keep him at her breast, gripping his ass to slam him harder, faster. He felt the desperation, the need in his cock, the driving urge to possess, claim, lay claim; he would have her, have her.

Kate moaned his name, breathless pleas, urgings, her mouth open at his cheek, his temple. He lifted his head from her breast and used his fingers to twist her wet nipple, making her cry out. He fucked her hard now, fucked her, an arm bracing her spine to get himself deeper, fucked her deeper, deeper-

She orgasmed with a shout, arching into him, her body clutching his cock so fiercely that his control slipped, shattered.

He climaxed right after her, chasing her hips with his pulsing ejaculation, grinding her back into the counter, crushing his pelvic bone to her clit until she dropped.

She was panting. She laughed and slapped her hand at his bicep where he was barely holding onto her, her fingers trailed in the sweat under his arm. “Holy shit, that’s good. Wow. You’re good.”

She rolled her head to look at him, her grin splitting her face, and he eased up from his drape over her body, barely able to find his feet. His knees were weak. His head was swimming. Her smile was lighting up the darkness.

“Back to bed?” he said, trying for nonchalant and winding up entirely besotted and broken. Didn’t even care. He was decimated by her. “Back to bed, Kate, so I can taste us.”

She flushed pink and purple under those bruises, and he took that for acceptance and lifted her back up against his chest. She twined her legs and arms around him again and bounced a little, making him yelp as his cock was jostled inside her.

“Mm, there we go, coming back fast, baby.”

“I’m still fucking eating you out first,” he warned, turning them around and heading back for her bedroom. “I am eating you out, Kate Beckett.”

“You don’t hear me complaining do you?”

“You always try to usurp me. Not happening this time. I came so hard my knees are washed out, so I got some staying power this time, baby dragon.”

“Oh, don’t you fucking dare,” she growled.

He grinned and nipped the pout of her mouth, found her bedroom through sheer force of will alone. He dropped her to the mattress and watched her bounce - lovely, gorgeous breasts - his cock aching with the sudden cold, bereft of her. 

Kate scooted back to the headboard and opened her legs, parting them like the fucking Red Sea, rubbing her palms up and down her thighs as she grinned at him. “Come here, Richard. Get down here where you belong.”

He fell before her, reached up to grab her behind the knees, and he yanked her cunt down to his mouth.

Kate tightened around him but already he’d found her clit and the taste of her burst on his tongue, taste of them.

Them. In their bed.

Rich, exotic, amazing, fierce.

He sucked at their arousal and worked at making her come again.

\-----


	4. Chapter 4

Kate gasped, clutched at his head with both hands. His tongue. His teeth. Oh, please. Oh, please, she had to-

“Rich-”

She moaned as she came, a long tumbling fall off the edge of the fucking cliff, body rattling as it hit every damn ledge on the way down. She lay on the bed panting, seeing stars, dizzy with the entire force of his amazing mouth over her.

Her fingers curled at his ear. Castle nuzzled his sharp scruff into the tender skin at her inside thigh and she shivered, darts of pleasure arrowing through her body. He stroked his fingers at her hip and kissed her, seemingly content to be draped over her legs.

And then he licked her folds, deep and strong, and Kate couldn’t help crying out. Her knees came up and Castle pushed her flat, crawled up her body as he sucked and tasted her skin. He was still wonderfully naked, his cock a thick presence at her belly.

Kate lifted her hands and framed his face, cupped his jaw and held him off a moment, looking at him. “You rushed back.”

It wasn’t a question and he didn’t pretend otherwise. “I didn’t want to leave.”

“So you rushed back.”

“I did what had to be done.”

“For me.”

“It killed me to leave you,” he said. He pushed past her hands and kissed her, slowly. So slowly, deep strokes of his tongue and then lighter, shallow ones. Working at it. Taking her, claiming her, backing off again when she went after him.

She rolled him over, sprawling herself over his hard body. So hard, in so many places. He was a rock. All angles and edges and muscle so tightly knit that she could pulverize herself against him.

Beckett pushed back and lifted up over him, staring down at the fuzzy, smudged, sexy picture he made below her.

“Beckett. Back down here.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head at him. “You had a job to do. In Marrakech. What’s the status, Agent Castle?”

“Status complete,” he said immediately, his attention snapping to her like - like she was his commanding officer. “Mission was a success.”

“You took a shortcut.”

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, sat back a little further on his hips to tease his cock. He grunted, clamped his hands at her waist, but he didn’t protest, or make any more demands.

“People got hurt,” she said.  
“People always get hurt. So long as you don’t, I don’t fucking care.”

Beckett planted her hands on his chest, leaned in over him, thinking about that. He looked scared; at the back of his eyes she could see how he was afraid he’d said too much, afraid she’d do something now, afraid he’d ruined it by talking.

He often did.

But not this time.

She was going to have to think about that, about being the thing he wanted more than - more than pleasing his father who would having a fucking cow when he heard Castle had taken a shortcut.

She was going to have to think about it, but not right now. Right now she was going to make him crazy with wanting her, and then she was going to make him come.

“Kate?”

“You stay right here, Richard. I have something for you.”

He swallowed; she actually could see him swallow. “It’s not - not the blindfold, is it?”

She relented, leaned down over him to softly brush her lips against his. “No, sweetheart. It’s not that. Something new.”

“Will I survive it?” he husked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, grinning against his mouth. “Let’s see, shall we?”

\-----

Castle didn’t move. He was afraid of what he’d said, the emotional repercussions of the blatant truth being out there like that, but she had seemed to take it well. Which was faintly shocking. She had taken a bald statement of his devotion well.

Like she didn’t mind it. Like she was okay with that.

That wasn’t Kate Beckett. 

But when she came back from the bathroom, she was swinging something between her fingers that looked an awfully lot like a vibrator and humming to herself. 

And he thought maybe she wanted to punish him for what he’d said, punish him for making her hear the truth.

If this was punishment, she wasn’t going to be happy.

He’d take punishment all day long if she was the one doling it out.

“Kate.”

“I found this at work,” she whispered, sneaking up to the bed. Tiptoeing. She grinned as she slid a knee over him and settled back on his hips. He grunted and palmed her waist, rubbing his hands up and down her thighs. 

“At work?”

“You know. Vice. Sometimes it can be... rather fucking hot. When I think about you.”

He grinned up at her, but he had to admit he was a little bit, a tiny bit afraid. “You think about me while you’re posing as a stripper, baby?”

“You know I do,” she hummed, leaning in over him. Her hair came down and brushed his cheeks as she kissed him lightly. “You made certain I would.”

“Oh, you mean that time in the alley?” he murmured, all innocent.

“Oh, that time in the alley,” she parroted, mimicking him. Wriggling her hips against his cock. Tease.

“You loved it.”

“I loved it,” she said slowly, like she fucking adored it. “You whistled at me from the alley and called me over, and fuck my senior detective nearly lost it. Get back on camera, Beckett. But it was just you.”

“Just me?”

“Just my fucking hot badass spy.”

“That’s only a little bit better. Now stop playing around, Beckett. What’ve you got in your hand?”

“Something for you. Wanna surprise you. You ready for this?”

“I really don’t think so,” he groaned, laughing a little at himself too. He craned his neck to get at her mouth, sucking at a kiss until she gave in and gave it to him. Her lips were amazingly soft, and strong too, and he loved the way she poured herself into it.

Her fingers stroked down his chest, circled his nipples. He grunted into her mouth and she hummed back, and he lost track of what she’d done with the sex toy entirely.

Her mouth, he could go forever with the way she kissed him. Her mouth had texture to it, a kiss was more than just a damn kiss. It was everything; the things she didn’t ever want to say somehow came out when her tongue slipped between his lips, and he had to lifted his hands and frame her face to take all of it.

Her hands kneaded his deltoids, rubbing in to his pectorals, friction against his nipples again. He grunted and she laughed at him, escaped his mouth to trail hot, open kisses down his neck to his chest. She licked his nipple and his hips jerked in response; her hair was light and ghostly along his skin, moving down.

Down.

Oh, fuck.

Down.

Her hands skimmed around his thighs and her mouth touched his cock. He groaned at the heat of her, dropped his hands down to grip her shoulders. But Beckett shook him off and rained little, fast kisses up his shaft to his head.

He growled, but she swallowed him.

“Fuck. Fuck. Kate. Fuck.”

She licked as she came up, his cock falling from between her lips, and he had to do something, something, had to thrust. But she coasted her fingers lightly to the backs of his thighs, tugged.

“What,” he croaked.

“Up, baby,” she murmured, nudging her cheek into his inside thigh. “Knees up.”

Oh, fuck. He had a very bad feeling about this.

She tugged again and he drew his knees up at her direction. Her hands dragged up to his knees, hanging on as she leaned in close. “Hey, there.”

He opened his eyes, couldn’t remember when he’d closed them. Naked Beckett, breasts against his calf, one cheek against his knee, watching him. Beautiful. 

“Me?” she laughed.

Oh, he’d said that out loud. “You.”

“I was just gonna ask. How limber are you?”

He grunted and shook his head against the pillow, picked up a hand that felt entirely too heavy, and he draped it over her side, closest he could get with her down there between his legs. “Uh. Limber, yeah.”

“Yeah? Good. Knees out then.” She pushed and he let his legs part, feeling strangely vulnerable with his fucking rigid cock straining for her and his knees open. Open.

She rubbed her fingers over the hair on his legs, up and down, and if she was trying to make it worse, she was doing a fucking amazing job. “Kate.”

“Hmm?”

“You gotta... do something or I’m gonna come.”

“That’s fine,” she said, as if she didn’t even care.

Maybe she didn’t.

“That’s fine, baby.” She put her hands at his hips and dragged her body up over him, her belly against his cock, rocking. “You need to come? You do that, sweetheart.”

“Fuck. Kate.”

She opened her mouth at his sternum and rubbed herself against him. “You’ll make it all the better when you get my surprise.”

“Shit,” he grunted. She was rocking her stomach into his cock, an insistent rhythm, his blood beginning to boil in his veins with trying to hold it back.

“You should come,” she whispered, licking his nipples, rubbing against him, hands up and down his thighs, up and down, up and down.

“Kate,” he moaned. He couldn’t help it. The position of his knees out against the mattress pushed his groin up against her stomach, and he stopped trying, thrusting into her. He could feel her belly going taut, her fingers against his thighs, her mouth on his chest, his own arousal tightening and burning.

He was going to come; he needed to come; he couldn’t stop.

“Kate!”

His orgasm exploded out of him, his come trapped between their bodies, his hips pumping hard and fierce with every last drop of it.

He was panting, breathless, when it was over, incoherent with the burn of his receding erection.

Kate shifted and skimmed one hand up between their stomachs, rubbing her fingers in his come. He grunted, but she slid upwards - fuck, she was sliding in his come - and then she pressed her fingers into his mouth before he knew what she was doing.

Castle startled at the taste of himself on her fingers, not exactly surprised but just - just - fucking hell. He sucked hard at her fingers, licked down to the creases at her palm, and she hummed something wonderful and withdrew her fingers to replace it with her own mouth.

Her tongue chased his taste; he pushed up into her and wanted more. She moaned around his tongue, trailed wet fingers down his chest, painting designs at his ribs. He flinched with the amazing feel of her, and she broke from his mouth, escaping.

He sought her eyes, and she was staring down at him, livid. Not angry, no, not anger. Something else. Burning. Passionately rising up in her, all that feeling. He wanted it, so badly, wanted her. “Kate, please.”

She came back down and kissed him again, hard, fierce, taking and plowing and pillaging his mouth. When she ripped herself away this time, she was breathless too. 

He cupped the back of her shoulders, holding her, but not keeping her. She slid back down his body and between his legs once more, stroked her hands at his inside thighs and around his cock.

Castle let out a long breath, blinking as he stared down at her.

Now he could concentrate, focus on how beautiful she was, how she wanted to do this for him, to him, without worrying about ruining everything.

“Kate,” he murmured.

“Hush. My turn now, Richard.”

He grinned, hooked a hand at the back of her neck, lifting up only long enough to kiss her again. And then he dropped down to the mattress and let her do whatever it was she wanted to do to him.

Something buzzed. Her face shifted into a kind of feral expectation, and then he shouted.

At his ass. Fuck. At his - fuck - fuck.

“Kate!”

He hadn’t been expecting that.

\-----

His orgasm vaulted out of him, like a trapeze artist taking that flying leap through the dark tent, the spotlight on his face as it twisted in a kind of vital and primal concentration, waiting to hit his mark.

She wasn’t sure he was going to make it; she was afraid he would fall and fall, hit the bottom without the net.

Because of course, neither of them wanted the net.

He was beautiful and animal when he came; he was another creature entirely. Twice, back to back, for all intents and purposes, and his orgasm was nearly like rage, a thing she could feel in her own body even as it wrecked the night.

She crawled up his protracted, rictus form and slid her skin against his, the stickiness and the burning flush. She twined herself around him, limbs and torso, her hair falling to his chest and plastered in his sweat, and some flint of consciousness or instinct caused him to fling an arm around her in return, clutching.

She could hear him breathing raggedly, disjointed, feel it in his chest and echoing in his lungs like the emptiness was threatening extinction. She herself had a hard diamond of some strange, sharp thing in her own chest; it was working its way up to her throat, it was cutting her up inside.

It wanted out and she was afraid of it.

Not of him, this wild thing she had tamed. Never of him, though part of her thought she ought to be, should be, that others were afraid and for good reason. She was not afraid of him.

She was afraid of the things inside her. She had darkness cracking her up, swallowing her whole, and this one sharp splinter, like glass, was making her bleed as it forced its way out.

But he was mostly not conscious, and he was sweaty and warm and he’d rushed back heedlessly into her fray, both from Marrakech and from the kitchen to her bedroom, dashing himself into her hands even though he shouldn’t, and the thing in her wanted out and into him, where it would be safe.

She pressed her mouth to his ear, the springing flesh and the shiver of his skin where she breathed, and she felt it clamoring now to get out, to get out, this terrible thing she couldn’t hang on to-

“I love you,” she whispered, mouthed, breathed. “I love you, Rick, I love you.”

There. It was done. It was over.

Never had to touch it again.

Beckett slouched over him, flesh pressed to flesh, and even though her orgasm had been a while ago now with his head between her legs, she felt strangely sated and filled. Filled.

She’d gotten rid of the words, but now she was heavy, as if darkness had weighed nothing but light had so much burden to it.

A heft.

She was so tired of carrying things.

\-----

He woke at peace.

It was the easiest slide up out of unconsciousness he’d ever experienced, like floating. Alone in a lake, the sunlight across his eyelids so that his vision was filled the black-whiteness, the inversion of sight, the flare of the world outside his own narrow existence. Floating. Buoyed, held. Gentle.

He opened his eyes to the light and watched the stillness of the room, the faint shadows on the wall from a plant in the window, so out of proportion by the sun that their reality faded into near-obscurity against the robin’s-egg blue of her bedroom.

He loved this room, its fragile intimacies found in a framed and pressed flower, an elephant with its trunk aloft in a fierce but delicate rebellion, the winding and curling vine with its yellowing leaves that clung to life against the pale and watery sun coming through the window.

He loved this woman, her fragile intimacies found in the press of her body against his in sleep, the arm thrown over her head in a kind of naive wantonness, the tendrils of her hair across her cheeks and stirred by her breath as it rose and fell from her parted lips. 

She was beside him, lovely and naked, sleeping with her skin against his even if her body held its own space in their bed. Her breast rose from sheet pooled at her waist, though the handira was twisted at her other side, tucked under her arm as if she’d been cradling it against her.

Castle lifted slowly on an elbow and raised above her, reaching for the blanket. It came teasingly, in fits and starts as he tried not to jostle her awake. Let her sleep, let her remain floating in that light-licked lake. 

He spread the blanket over her body, couldn’t resist dusting his lips across her collarbone and down to the flattened roundness of her breast, his mouth catching the rhythm of her heart below the protection of her ribs.

Castle laid back down, awake but willing to stay, start the day studying the leafy patterns on the walls and the feel of her breathing beside him. He lifted his arm and tucked his hand under his head, stabilizing his neck, eyes closing, lashes touching so that the view out her bedroom window was fringed in a halo of yellow light.

The world furled open to him like a flower, petals soft and edged in their own shadows, so that he saw it all more clearly, the whole of existence in this cupped morning, Kate breathing sleep beside him.

He lifted his other arm, the one between them, and brought his hand to the angle of her jaw and the touch of her lips. He could feel the breath leave and come back, leave and come back, natural, as it was supposed to be.

There was a rhythm to it; she could count on its return.

She slept easy now, and he was grateful that the world had not intruded this far, had not made it into their room together, had been stopped at the door.

She had done that, saved it; she had fought for them.  
\-----


End file.
